Chris Gregson, Interviewed One Frustration I Have Overcome Is Disposing Paintings That I Could Not Resolve
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Chris Gregson, Interviewed One frustration I have overcome is disposing paintings that I could not resolve. Now, I’m able to rework surfaces so the pieces have a deep history. Some paintings take as long as five years to complete. What I let in are the impulses feeding my immediate physical, intellectual and emotional world. What I keep out is a planned agenda, signature style and pre-conceived painting formula. For me it is about problem solving and The following is the transcript of an interview that moment of inspiration. between artist Chris Gregson and Paul Ryan. PR: Your work is clearly attached to Paul Ryan is Professor of Art in the various aspects of modernist Department of Art and Art History at Mary painting – particularly those Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia and a associated with abstract painting contributing editor for Art Papers Magazine before World War II or Abstract since 1990. His articles have also appeared Expressionism. For example, you in Sculpture Magazine, Artlies Magazine, and the New Art Examiner. recently told me of a recent visit to the Paul Klee Museum in Bern, PR: In a recent e-mail to me, you Switzerland, that was quite profound described your paintings as existing for you. How do you make your on a “continuum,” with “no beginning attachment to high modernist or end point.” This seems to open abstraction relevant to making art in your studio practice to, in some 2011? ways, incorporating anything you see CG: I brought along sketchbooks on and respond to. This is freeing in the Switzerland trip. I ended up many ways, but I can also see it as going to a lot of museums in Basel, frustrating. Which is it for you; and, Berne, and Zürich and got the how is this so? What do you let in impulse to draw items I saw on and what do you keep out? display. I started at the Rietberg Museum in Zürich mimicking the CG: My open-ended approach can contours of India bronzes and be frustrating because I don’t have a copying details from Indian strict formula. The sub conscious miniatures. I am using those and intuition lead me through a drawings to create a whole new series of challenges. I always work series of images. I know the images on multiple projects simultaneously. from the sketches will not be Each project could have 10 to 20 recognizable in my new work. They pieces as part of the series. I slowly will act as the starting point. sort the images into groups and things move forward from there. I have a romantic, nostalgic interest I was doing a lot of independent in high modernism. These artists study at the time and found that were the trailblazers. Having been stage design and the visual theories involved with the development of the in Paul Klee’s “Pedagogical outsider art movement in the 1980s, Sketchbook” to be similar in many I know that excitement when a ways. I began to experiment with handful of people get together to watercolors using Klee’s organize exhibits, build collections “Sketchbook” to guide my personal and share ideas to define a genre. work without the leadership of a Early modernism was like that I playwright’s script. Klee’s teaching suppose, artists would gather around described the use of color, angles people like Alfred Stieglitz and things and weight of the line all carried a happened. On the other hand my dramatic tension similar to what I interest in early modernism is akin to had learned in stagecraft. the way A. R. Penck takes Klee’s stick figures to a new place. I In the early 1990s, Thomas sometimes use the visual language Nozkowski shared with me his from the era, disregard the original process during a studio visit. He told dogma, and integrate the forms as me he was taught by the Abstract part of my visual vocabulary. Expressionists. I was fascinated when he said his work was rooted in PR You seem to employ the element his personal experiences. But I just of narrative in your paintings in a could not understand how his way that is not dissimilar to Thomas everyday experiences led to his Nozkowski’s approach to images. At first, I painted landscapes incorporating aspects of what he and people I knew. Gregory Amenoff sees/experiences every day. reinforced my direction when he said Describe your own use of to me it’s all about water, earth and narrative…it seems to be one in sky. That sounded fundamental and which, as I like to say, “form leads something I could grab on to. I the way.” How has this been affected understood what he was saying. I by your earlier professional knew automatically that the external experience in the theater – world, in particular, the landscape especially in the area of stage was something he internalized and design? reinterpreted in visual form through his emotion and spiritual filters. Over CG I studied at the New York Studio time, natural, figurative and structural and Forum of Stage Design. It was a forms emerged as part of my progressive school that emphasized narrative in an ever-increasing conceptual based design. Lester freewheeling way. Polakov, my instructor, studied art with George Grosz so he had an art What I do now is use my personal orientation. I had been taught to experience – the thought, the feeling think in terms of three-dimensional or a specific image - as a starting space. My designs were about point. The mark making process creating settings in support of the slowly transforms into the final image playwright’s narrative. through a series of decisions and challenges I establish along the way. artists’ collective that peripherally There is always the possibility of one examines some of the roles of more challenge. That is why my contemporary abstract painting paintings are always a point in time. through a series of group exhibitions that change and evolve. There used PR: Some of your paintings, for to be a very strong and influential example, Constructs (a211), (J511), “culture” of abstract painting in the and (6211) seem like a visual index 20th century, culminating with of your formal vocabulary, or “group Abstract Expressionism. In some portraits” of personal forms you ways (for better or worse), it even employ. You seem to consciously extended into the postmodern overdo or overfill the picture plane, decades of the 1980s and 1990s. setting up a visual competition But this doesn’t really exist anymore, among the various elements that except in the realm of nostalgia or initially seems somewhat disruptive, the practice of reactionary painters. but “grows” on the viewer, and Where do you think abstract painting eventually works. Talk about this is today? And, how do you fit in? structured jamming and semi- disarray of shapes, lines, and CG: The Constructs group is about textural relationships being part of a community. The group’s mission is to present CG: The works are collages of my abstract work to the public in the exterior and interior worlds. form of exhibitions, public programs Sometime, there are multiple layers, and publications. Since you are a segmented sections and forms member, this interview is part of the merging together. I think of my work Construct’s mission. Community is in terms of hybrids - merger of forms important to me. One of the great in space, repetitive forms that vary things about the Internet is the way slightly, forms that morph into you can construct your own virtual something new. community. Amy Feldman, Jacob Duval, Ernst Caramelle, Steve The paintings you referred to are visual ambiguities first and foremost. Cushner, Don Crow, Suzan Frecon, Jasmine Justice, Steve Karlik, Chris The Cubist had this idea of seeing Martin, Woong Kim, Andrew Masullo, form from multiple angles. One of the Anne Seidman and a bunch of other things that reoccurs in my work is the forms have multiple connotations. I artists are in a file of artists I follow. Anytime I want to go to a New York draw heavily from a world of visual art opening I go to the James Kalm clutter. Look around you’ll see a Report on YouTube. “Brooklyn Rail” complex network of textures, objects, magazine and a number of blogs are light and spatial relationships. So I available all the time for criticism and mix the ambiguity and real space exhibition reviews. into my images to offer something that can exist on its own as one There have been a few recent more impression in the visual world. shows, articles and publications that PR: Along with Sally Bowring, you focus on abstract painting. Raphael Rubinstein wrote about a recent form are a co-founder of “Constructs,” an of abstract painting in Art in America defining it as “provisional painting.” I think this type of authoritative article is just harder to get everyone’s attention because there are so many experts out there. There are other shows and articles focusing attention on current abstract paintings. One group of painters is categorized as the “New Casualists.” I identify with their concern of casting aside rigid fundamentals, freely referencing earlier art historical styles and abandoning strict art historical dogma for a more freewheeling expression. While my work is based on subjective experiences, I use abrupt visual shifts, often a lack of formal cohesion and an off balance approach that I think is reflective of our times. I have always lived in the moment and my narrative is based on that. I fit into the arts community as one artist that knows his best most honest, communication is through his work.